With Lincoln gone
by zman123
Summary: For as long as the ten girls in the Loud house can remember, they've always depended on a certain white-haired brother to assist them in their simple day to day tasks. To keep the balance in an otherwise very unstable and chaotic setting where any kind of peace is short-lived. Yet how will such a family survive when their only source of relief decides he's finally had enough?
1. Future Lynn Loud

**The story of Lynn Loud. AKA: Daisy Roberta Pollon  
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger**

 _Lynn: "Firmly Grasp it in your hand"_

 _Lynn hands Lincoln a tennis racket but Lincoln drops it.  
Lynn: "Grr. Firmly Grasp it"  
Lincoln once again drops the racket that Lynn tries to give him.  
Lynn: "FIRMLY GRASP IT!"  
Lynn forcefully shoves the racket into Lincoln's hand so that he is forced to hold it very tightly.  
Lincoln: "OW!"  
Lynn: "That ought to do it"_

I lay stretched on my bed dreaming, staring at the ceiling not knowing what else to do to waste the day away.  
My team would not be called to play another game anytime soon after we crushed our opponents yesterday at the finals, hours of strenuous and devoted practice coming from the combined effort of every last player on our team both junior and senior making the whole ordeal of scraping a win manageable even if still far from easy.

Though who'd have thought that our opponents would fight so savagely and barbarically, having regrouped under the terrible banner of their new captain, a fearful man known only as "Bowser".  
Showing my team and me no mercy as they stared us down through their fiery eyes just as each match began, unleashing howls of unrestrained fury as they punctuated each throw of the big and heavy ball with the full force of the fierce resentment they would hold against us till they breathed their last.

The late nights I would spend comforting my teammates, some of whom were so devastated at the prospect of facing such a terrible opposition that they would fall to the ground crying after even the slightest failures during practise, those finally paid off.

It was just as my dear and beloved little brother had put it during the years he still lived with us.  
That it was not all about winning and that the truly greatest sportsmen (and sportswomen for that matter) took their losses with but pride and dignity while never letting their victories blind them to what truly mattered in the long and treacherous journey known as "Life".

Warnings that a younger, more stupid and reckless me could never accept.  
Warnings that too late, had taken me to the place I had reached now.

Even in the weak and tired state I was in at this moment and now as I felt the many passed by years bending my almost breaking back, I still heard his voice.  
His beautiful, passionate voice that was the only thing that put me to sleep on my sleepless nights.

What I took to be his last warning that even he was through with trying to help me realize the errors of my younger self, was ironically the one memory I had grown to treasure the most. The one that brought me back to earth when another loss at my sporting games brought pain to my head and tears to my eyes.

"You know Lynn." He had said to me that terrible day as he sat looking at what was clearly an old album of his most treasured photographs, not even looking at me "You used to be cool because making sure all of us had fun meant more to you than anything, including yourself. But now look at what you'll do the second you don't win. And even when you win, it still doesn't make you completely happy and you still do mean things to us, to me especially."

The me in the past reacted off course as anyone could expect from a whiny and really immature infant in the body of a nearly grown up fourteen-year-old who was even allowed to sit at the grown-ups table during meals.  
And that was to ask in a soft, still very dangerous voice that was on the verge of exploding into a highly violent tantrum just what my poor brother meant by any of that as well as warning him not to insult me anymore than he already had since back then, I was still clueless enough to have the fantasy that I was the best at least in terms of sports in the entirety of our city Royal woods if not on the face of the entire earth.

We all had our fantasies even back then, but mine were particularly selfish even if you took that into consideration.

I should have realized the second I finished my sentence that I had already unleashed the unthinkable onto what might have been for a happy family as I saw that when he turned to face me as a mark of politeness, his face as white as his almost snow-tinted light blonde hair.

"Well?" I had demanded, spreading my arms wide so that he could continue to throw more insults to enrage me further, feeling almost stupid the instant I said it even in the enraged state his very honest words had put me into.

Poor Lincoln was never the most popular guy in school as kind as he tried to be.  
As a result, he was socially awkward, shy and the almost perfect definition of a shrinking violet.  
But he was no sucker and he avoided the bait, instead opting to walk almost straight past me to go out of his room and downstairs, to do something that clearly did not involve me whatever it would be.

I expected this to be the last I saw of him that day but just as he made it to the stairway, he very cautiously turned his tired face back to gaze at me once more.

"It's not your age that's changed Lynn. It's you."

And before I had any chance to even take in half of just what that meant, away he went making almost no sound at all as he took the stairs down one slow step at a time.

I should have known since that day, that the events about to transpire would be most of, if not all my fault.  
My own stupid and selfish fault.

Sure enough, not long after that terrifying stare of disapproval my little brother had graced me with as he said what I only now realized were his parting words to me, he was gone.  
He'd clearly taken with him his signature plain orange shirt and navy jeans had gone with him as well as a few cans of soup which he had no doubt ransacked while we were all sound asleep the previous night, but all his other possessions remained completely untouched.

Not even a note was left for us. None of that teary junk most runaway people left with all that shtick and rubbish lying about how they would miss the family that they were now leaving far behind.  
A lot of people in my school would say it was because our brother held too deep a grudge to care enough to do that, but even in the few tragic days that we spent waiting with bated breath for joyous news that never came, I knew those people were jerks I wouldn't touch with a barge pole if I knew what was good for me and what remained of the family I'd cruelly betrayed with my antics.

Little bro Lincoln loved us more than he loved himself. The happiness of his family to him was no chore but rather his aspiration. His purpose in life.  
It mattered not how many times we tried and failed to appreciate his kindness since to him all that mattered was that he saw us happy.  
Free time and material goods for himself were but little more than trinkets to him.

He always seemed like the rough-skinned and always happy boy that we only too late realized he really was not. Apparently at one point in the past we as a group of siblings were too stupid to realize that a person talking to themselves frequently and habitually was actually nothing short of a severe mental disorder that was very difficult to treat, and only got worse the longer it was left unchecked.

But why did we care about how an important trip to some sort of psychologist could and probably would have really spared our brother from just about all the horrific trauma's he must've been going through now in the unknown place he had wandered away to by now.  
We certainly couldn't have given less of a dang when he was being so overworked by us that his calendar had not one day free of the difficult tasks we had thrust onto him.  
We hadn't noticed his extra baggy eyes or the fact he had been breathing with a lot of difficulty in the days before we'd well and truly crossed the moral horizon and really sunk our good names as our only brother's loving sisters down the drain.

By more or less breaking every known law on the subject of family rights and treatment by kicking him from the house like he was some sort of dumb animal, his pleas for mercy only falling on our deaf and stupid ears.  
All the time he'd dedicated to his family, to his sisters, to us. All his precious time which he'd selflessly sacrificed just to see our approval.  
It meant nothing.  
Absolutely nothing.

"You're not allowed to have any free time to yourself because you owe us favours. And if you say no to even a single thing we ask you to do, we kick you from our house and don't talk to you because screw how tired you are" was what we more or less told the poor guy, our completely unjust actions doing all the speaking for us.

Not long after Lincoln or "Linc" as we preferred to call him left never to return, things started going downhill real fast.  
Our family losing our only brother was like an athlete losing an arm and leg.  
Except that the athlete could find some hope and comfort in those metal limbs that were according to my more scientifically inclined sister Lisa, were getting more advanced every day.

There were no prosthetics for those who drove their family apart with their neglect, indifference and outright stubbornness and refusal to admit to their own mistakes which were plain for all but themselves to see.  
There was no honour in a winner who could not take pride in losing as well as winning.

Since as I had learned too late from the less than pleasant experiences that'd come later as a result off my share of the bad decisions that led to this growing rift in an already very unstable household, there was no better sportsman than the one who'd seen defeat and toughed it through.  
And the things that didn't kill you whether pleasant or not, could only make you stronger provided you put aside your pride to take in each and every experience as a valuable lesson.

But there's no need to prolong a story that's already long outstayed its welcome into talking any further about how all this could have been avoided had we as a family put aside our pride to see what could not have been more obvious if someone waved it up as a sign before our eyes.  
Pride went before a fall. That was another lesson I'd learned in my years away from the house in the town I loved so well.

Suffice it to say, that after Lincoln's mysterious disappearance to heaven knew where, the deep and hidden worries that I had about not being the greatest sportsman that I could have been began to surface more and more.  
I had always as the tomboy of the family considered myself the closest with our only brother, with us being the closest in terms of age and all that but his sudden leaving had been the hammer that finally shattered the mask of lies that I had refused to take off all this time.

I wasn't his favourite sister, not even close.  
I could hardly be further from the truth if I tried.

That was one lie I'd always told myself, perhaps even then worried that it might not be true after all.

The other lie was how I was a good example to all my siblings, with me being the lucky sibling to be named after dad.  
A high and valuable honour since that was usually an honour reserved for princes and princesses, and even then only the favourite one of them would get it.  
It meant that dad found me special. Thought I'd be the one to go on to do all the amazing things he wanted to do when he was my age, but never could despite being a wonderful man.  
I was probably the kid he talked the most about when he was out drinking with his friends and boasting about the great things he had, and the one he had the most good things to say about.

But how conceited I found I really could be, shocked me to no end when I thought back to the series of beyond tragic events my selfishness had caused.  
No surprises that among the first of those events was for my roommate Lucy to refuse to ever speak to me again.  
Not unlike what she had done during the "Room change" incident which I will not talk further about for the sake of keeping together my remaining sanity.  
But far worse since this time there was no one else who'd accept me as a new roommate, much less accept my explanation as to why they should be the one to help me reconcile with my estranged roommate who became less and less talkative every day that Lincoln was away.  
Eventually she could hardly even speak, opting to nod or shake her head to most questions mum or dad asked her.  
The closest I ever got to being comforted or understood came from the sister I'd least expect to give any such kind of good treatment to an overzealous overachiever meanie like myself.

It came from eldest sister Lori, who despite usually never doing what an oldest sibling ought to have done for his or her younger ones, managed to salvage some form of empathy in Linc's absence.

I didn't really remember what she had told me during the counselling session she had reluctantly scheduled with me one sunny afternoon where she allowed me into her room so she could talk with me in private.  
Something she rarely used to do with Lincoln around, with how much more her boyfriend "Bobby Boo Boo bear" seeming to matter so much more to her than any of us did, Lincoln inclusive.  
And that cloudy afternoon as I sat on Leni's bed while Lori sat on hers there was a certain sympathetic and soft warmth in those usually hard and uncaring eyes of my oldest sister.  
Something almost as worth a photo as when Lucy smiled.

Lori spoke to me as if she had been a trained and full qualified counsellor all her life.  
She even placed her hand on my shoulder as she tried to soothe the sadness that had festered in me like an itch that wouldn't go away now that our brother was to all intents and purposes as good as dead with how all the best policemen in Royal Woods couldn't find him nor any real trace of him. And if not actually dead, then at least dead inside with how angry he must still be at us all for never once feeling anything but indifference for all the good he'd gone out of his way to do for us knowing full well he'd be the one to suffer for it.

As Lori continued to soothe and advise (unaware sadly that her kind and gentle words were having no effect on my depression or feelings of helplessness) I begun to see a completely different side of the domineering and control-freak that never let us do what we wanted when mum and dad always foolishly left Lori in charge just because she was the eldest and the eldest had special privileges or something like that.  
I even began to empathize (something I had almost forgotten the meaning of) as I saw more and more clearly how despite how hard she was trying to keep it together and conceal it, Lori was in truth as scared and uncertain of what was to come as I was.

But more importantly, I had now realized too late as we looked at each other like two young soldiers on different sides from some long and pointless war who were unsure whether to shoot each other or not, that the pains of being in a big family were not something everyone was built to handle.  
Like a nightmare that kept repeating.  
A war that never ended.  
A maze with no prize save perhaps the self-righteous feeling of satisfaction at toughing through each day without inciting any more sadness for the others that we were forced to be around whether we liked it or not.

The stresses of now having nine younger siblings since the addition of baby sister Lily into the household had irrevocably changed and crushed eldest sister Lori.  
Just as the pressure to always win and be first place in every competition I took part in so that I could prove to daddy that his choice to name me of all his children after himself was not wasted, had made me blind to what really mattered.  
Had turned me from the much less obnoxious and sensitive girl that Lincoln once deeply respected into this monster that probably took the greatest part of blame in finally destroying his determination to go any further. I could only consider myself lucky now that it hadn't come to a fistfight in which he unleashed the rage he'd probably been bottling his whole life now.

But what she actually told me about how I could better cope with my depression, I couldn't properly hear since halfway into our little discussion, Lori's words had become like static and the pounding in my head had become far too severe for me to just shrug away.  
And so half lost in deep reflection and half consumed by guilt for my own part that I played in bringing this family to ruin, I continued to try without success to listen as Lori seemed to keep using longer and longer words.

I had however heard all I needed to hear from oldest sister Lori who was not generally well known for giving good emotional support but had still managed to do wonders for me this time.  
Had clearly heard her say the sentence quietly and respectfully yet nonetheless very angry.

"You made your bed. Now lie in it."

I barely remembered how I spent the days after Lori's help session with me after Leni returned home from the mall and Lori announced that that she and her roommate had some work they now needed to conduct in private and that she regretted not having more time for me.  
I remembered that conversations at the dining table, both the one for my younger siblings and the one I sat at with my older siblings and my parents were now deathly quiet.  
You could have gone to the graveyard out of town in the dead of night and have heard more noise.  
You couldn't even drop a pin anymore without everyone at the table hearing it vibrant and clear.

We still played board games and other kinds of general games together to try and shrug away the guilt and boredom that having one less sibling in the house had left us with.  
Funny how we each always used to complain how having to share a living place with nine other people was nine too many.  
Ironic now that with just one less of those people the little house where it had to be for the most part two a room on account of how tiny it was, now seemed like a big mansion so huge that you could spend an entire afternoon giving a guided tour of it and still have plenty of unexplored spaces to return to for the next day trip.

It didn't matter that I no longer insulted my siblings when I won our games and that I had long given up my bad habits of writing the word "Loser" onto their foreheads when they were asleep.  
It also didn't matter that with a bigger budget mum and dad could now buy us a bigger compendium of sports equipment and other games.  
These gaming sessions were now pointless.  
Bland, bitter and utterly boring.

So that by the time that the next card game of Go Fish was over, half the players had fallen asleep and those who hadn't were already yawning when they spoke, drooling slightly as they did.  
Perhaps the biggest irony of this all was how I was always among the first to lose my grip on concentration and drift into darkness despite previously being the most hyped family member for every game.  
Another game meant another chance to win after all, and another win meant that it was time for Lynner, Lynner chicken dinner.

I was the greatest footballer on my football team. Little sister Lana beat me ten times in a row throughout the first ten football games we played without Lincoln.  
I scraped a close draw on the eleventh only because Lana had been forced to stay up the previous night fixing some pipes which had been neglected for a long time. They say I was a great runner who gave even Usain Bolt a run for his money. Heh get it?  
From the day Lincoln's room went back to being the supplies closet it once was, I was always last in line when we went for a morning walk or jog to try and stay fit and get some fresh air.  
"The sky" I tiredly replied when dad asked just what was so interesting to make me go so slow.

It was a wonder therefore why none of my sports team ever thought about kicking me away even when urgent news that a timid and young ashen-haired boy from Royal Woods Elementary school was never seen again begun to spread like wildfire through a forest during a hot summers heatwave.  
Aside from a few cold glances that some of the teammates who already thought pretty badly of me, no one harmed me.  
Perhaps deep down I wish they did.

It was not a smear campaign nor a remorseless bully in the end that ruined me. I was tough and abrasive enough for most of the jerks in town to be too scared to even come near me and my sisters and parents had the courtesy to still love me in spite of my bad habits which I'd never tried to control until too late.

It was something far, far worse than simple depression which could be at least helped with regular help sessions with good friends or maybe even a doctor.  
What I began to suffer from was far more serious than anything that the so called "Happy pills" given as a last ditch resort for the most urgent cases.  
I never asked for a visit to the clinic however bad I began to feel in the years that followed knowing deep in my gut that ten happy pills a day which was ten times the recommended intake, wouldn't do the slightest good to me whatsoever no matter what mum and dad firmly insisted time and time again when they saw me slumped on my bed when I came home from school too tired to talk to anyone.

What I felt then and even now that I've somewhat recovered from the worst of my pains, was far worse than the hurt that an athlete who'd broken both his legs and his arm.  
Since while the athlete could take painkillers and even get a metal limb if necessary, I could not.  
To feel the same degree of suffering that would plague me for at least the next five years as I accustomed myself to the joys of living in a house with no brothers and just nine sisters, you would have to hit your best friend in the world until you crippled them for life and they needed to spend their remaining days in a hospital bed hooked to a mass of tubes that they could never be disconnect from.

I felt that what I had done was the same as if I had personally stabbed my missing brother in the chest with a great big knife.  
I certainly wasn't stupid enough to realize that even as an athlete who was used to exhausting training regimes to improve my skills that sleeping outside on the damp grass and fallen leaves even on a warm summer day wasn't the most pleasant way to recover one's energy for the next day's morning laps.

Or that ripping other people's homework that they spent valuable time on in order to make victory confetti was something far too stupid for anyone not an emotionless psycho to even think about.  
Don't even get me started on how I'd never properly have the chance to thank my brother for that time he let me use his bedroom without me even having to ask very nicely and how all I had done was completely spit on his kindness by trying to turn his space into mine.  
Like a space invader, my comedian sister Luan was bound to quip if she saw me writing this now.

I'd been a bad sportsman both in terms of being the captain of my team and in being a player.  
A captain's goal was to keep the team's spirits up through both win and lose while a player's goal was to simply give everything the best they could, staying true to the belief that it was hard work that paid off while leaving nothing to random chance and dumb luck with no effort of their own.  
I failed in both those roles, the first when my brother was kicked from the house to be ignored even when he begged with tears in his eyes to be forgiven and let back inside.  
The second when after I lost but one stupid board game, I went completely crazy and began trying to turn everything around me into a competition just for the sake of satisfying my even more stupid ego and adrenaline rush.  
During my wild rampage I managed to slam Leni into a wall, keep my tired family up all night with my obnoxious snoring and (perhaps most shockingly) knocked a bunch of toy blocks onto my helpless baby sister Lily so that they fell hard onto her burying her underneath.  
I was lucky that all Lily had given me in return was a blown raspberry and that she didn't start crying or trying to hit me for being the terrible older sister and roll model I reduced myself to that day.

Trophies and medals began to have no impact on me.  
What was one more or one less to me when all that another award had made me do in the past was brag and rub my successes in other people's faces.  
When all that trying to get the trophies in the first place made me throw a big and immature tantrum when I didn't get one.

Not one year had passed before I begun to politely resign from my old teams while shaking each and every one of my teammates warmly by the hand as I thanked them for the years we played together as teammates on the same field.  
I wanted to leave then and there while I was still well remembered and liked. To quit before I was fired, so to speak and keep what few shreds of dignity I had left.

The rest of my years at school I really preferred not to talk about.  
I was always keeping a wary eye out for the bully that never came.  
Ready to defend myself from the punch and kick never aimed at me.

Bags appeared under my eye when I realized I would for a number of years lie awake every night pondering why I hadn't said two simple words that could have made a world of difference to what was happening now.  
Two words that could help a lot to save a friendship or any kind of relationship any day.

But I'd never be able to say them now with the person I was meant to say them toward out of my life forever. My punishment was to forever hold my peace.

The sleeplessness began to make it harder and harder for me to even see.  
It blinded me just as my pride had blinded me once to the bad things I was doing to my own family.  
I don't even remember that well how the next few years for me went.  
I think that my father and I got into a lot of argument and that my schoolwork went terribly but I'm not sure.

I do remember that the terrible final grade marks which I felt was the last straw for dad was what led me to do what anyone would consider the most hypocritical and reckless thing anyone could have done in my situation.

Not waiting for my dad to arrive at the mark collection point so that he would see with his own eyes that I'd only achieved a D for my best subject and a horrible combination of E's and F's for the others, I turned tail and fled without looking back.

I ran and not even checking the destination, boarded the first bus I saw.  
The tears in my eye that day made grasping much more of what happened next difficult.

I did remember all too clearly however that the bus took me to a rundown squalor where I was yelled at by the disgruntled driver to leave.  
I obeyed and did my best not to feel too badly when as a sort of cliché the bus threw up a puddle of muddy water onto me as it drove away to leave me to myself.

Still with tears obstructing my vision I began to make my way as best I could through the new streets I found myself in, taking note for no particular reason that a worn and barely readable sign written in badly worn paint read "Welcome to Sarisaland".

The lucky once in a lifetime thing that snapped me back to reality was something I doubt anyone would believe if I told them.  
Something far luckier than any friendly guy letting me into their house.  
Something I needed and had in a weird way been hoping for.

A scream rang out from a corner. No ordinary scream but the very sound of terror and despair which seemed to vibrate right in the deepest recesses of my eardrum and my mind.  
Even in the half crazy state I was in that moment, I who had devoted my life to toughening myself and priding myself in being my little brother's "protector" knew that sound anywhere.  
I knew that it was time to shake off my own stupid feelings of self-pity which even I knew I didn't deserve.  
I knew it was time to wipe the tears and say the old phrase that even I as a hardened athlete didn't like saying which was "to deal with it".

But most of all I knew that it was time to prove to Lincoln that I was more than just another roughhousing freak with no feelings.  
And that years of pummelling my siblings to the ground, of throwing balls for them to catch when they were begging me not to since they were not ready to catch yet.  
Years of training extra hard from the fear of losing even a single games because I was such a defeatist unable to stomach losses, was about to pay off in a very strange but very useful sort of way.

Smearing away the fluid from my eyes with one quick movement of my sleeve, I quickened my sprint while altering my direction so that I took whichever turn the screams were sounding loudest.  
I knew that it was time to do what I should have been doing years ago. And I had only seconds to do it in.

I knew even before I got to the source of the horrible cries of help exactly what I would find.  
And I had readied my fists and my courage for exactly that.  
With one lightning quick movement I lunged forward and grabbed the arms of a large and muscular boy bigger than me and pulled him away before quickly releasing him so that he staggered backward a short distance before regaining balance.

I hoped that this would be enough to deter him since I was reluctant to use any more force unless it was my last option.  
"Bad guys never like the easy way, only the hard way." My brother's sweet voice rang in my mind as the thug straightened himself and with a cry of great fury charged at me like a savage beast.  
His only intention clearly being to smash every bone in my body so that all the doctors in the world wouldn't be able to put me together.

I sighed silently to myself as I realized what this entailed.  
As I threw myself out the way easily and threw a quick but still powerful punch at his chest as he passed me.  
The blow was heavy enough to stun him and I quickly followed with a slam which took him to the ground.  
The same kind of slam Lincoln had told me time and time again to please stop using on him when he wasn't ready yet since it was extremely hurtful and very mean.

Then before he could react, my arm had reached out like a snake and entangled itself around his neck making him completely powerless.

"I don't want to hurt you." I managed to say despite the flood of emotions coursing through my knackered body "Just say you give up and no one will get hurt."  
I tightened my grip slightly to show him I was serious about needing to use more violence if it was my only option. Hoping to intimidate him enough to realize that it was just not worth it to continue this pointless fight.

Long tense seconds passed as I looked at him and he looked at me. We were both making a decision.  
This bully was clearly contemplating his poor life decisions that brought his neck into my strong and painful grip. Wondering why stupid people like me didn't just mind their own business and let him bully others smaller than himself in peace.  
As well as wondering how soft he would likely look in front of his gang of other bullies if he did give up here and now even if his life was being squeezed out from him bit by bit for every second he hesitated.

I was thinking if I'd have it in me to keep this hold up much longer since I was disobeying my brother's rule of nonviolence which was probably among the leading reasons he had chosen to "GTFO". As well as what I'd have to do if the bully tried to resist any further.

My strong and tight grip had its intended effect in the end and the bully eventually muttered in a barely audible voice that he gave up.  
"I didn't hear you. Say that again." I demanded trying to sound as intimidating as I could.  
I needed to be completely sure that he had at least for the time being understood that he had lost and that it was time for him to be completely sincere about turning over a new leaf.  
"Please don't kill me. I said I give up." He replied, a little louder this time. He clearly thought I meant what I said and for the time being at least he was actually scared of me enough to not try anything else stupid.

I didn't reply as very slowly I loosened my grip on him and kept a close eye on his every movement all the while with my free hand still clenched and aimed at his face.  
With one gesture of the arm that had held him prisoner I gestured for him to leave immediately.

He stood indecisively too stunned to move.  
"Leave now!" I shouted angrily.

And with tears forming in his frightened eyes he finally did what I wanted and with wobbly but fast steps ran back into the darkness of the bleak evening.

I continued to keep my legs apart and my fist poised until the sound of his footsteps had finally died away for several long uninterrupted seconds of absolute silence.  
Then very cautiously I approached the hapless victim of this mean man who dare I say it gave even myself a run for my money in terms of meanness.

A young dark haired girl dressed very plainly in shorts, a sports top and cheap trainers.  
She reminded me in some ways of my roommate Lucy with how silent she was and how long it took her to acknowledge my presence even if I was not the bad man that had harassed her and threatened unthinkable things to her.

"It's alright. The bad man is gone now and there's nothing to worry about. I'm not going to hurt you, I promise." I managed to say as the girl very slowly accepted my hand in helping her get back up from the ground and to stand once again.

"Thank you" she eventually said in a surprising clear and unbroken voice despite the fear still in her eyes as she dusted herself and turned to look at me like I was some kind of great hero that deserved a museum and a library full of memoirs and a golden statue in every city around the country dedicated to me. A hero which now I was not but would strive with every bit of effort to try and become. Starting now with how I had done perhaps my first selfless act in years.

"You didn't have to do all that." She said as she continued to gaze upon me like a diehard sports fan gazed on their favourite idol.  
"Don't mention it" I managed to reply, never great at conversation or making introductions as my sisters rightfully pointed out time and time again.  
I would have wanted to leave then and there, grateful that I had been of service and done a good deed.  
But unbeknownst to me, the girl was not done thanking me for the kind act that meant even more to her than I thought it did.

"What's your name." she asked after a little small talk we shared about how she'd taken this dark path specifically to try and avoid the bullies that loved to rough her up for her little loose change again and again.  
She asked this seemingly irrelevant and small question as if it were the most important thing in the world to her right now. As if it were the question that decided whether the entire rest of her  
life would be happy or sad.  
And I knew that if I were to continue being the better and less detestable hero that I had told myself I was going to try and be starting from now, I knew I would have to answer it carefully.

But I didn't have long I realized as the girl's big and inquisitive eyes seemed to stare right into my very soul. They were not mean or scary eyes. But rather sympathetic ones. And sympathy was not a thing I deserved right now after all that I'd done to get here.

Though not the brightest tool in the garden shed even I knew not to say "Lynn Loud Jr" which was the obvious answer to a seemingly no brainer question which in reality required the deepest thought process.  
It would spit in the face of everything my brother and my family had done for me and make me look like the most insensitive and sociopathic jerk.  
To call me an idiot would be an insult to all idiots.

What had Lynn Loud Jr ever done besides gloat and make fun of others when she won and throw big and violent tantrums when she lost?  
Besides lie to her supposedly favourite little brother that she'd always be there for him when he needed her and in truth do almost the exact opposite?  
Besides dragging her dad's good name through the mud by never learning the error of her ways?

Lynn Loud Jr would not have tried to stop the bully.  
And so the answer to my newest best friend's question was not Lynn Loud Jr.

I needed to think of a new name and quickly before the girl decided I was just as bad as the bully who'd try to take her money and decided to leave me alone forever with no chance of ever being cared about or loved for as long as I lived.  
But not just any old name either or else I'd be lying to my new friend which would be just as bad.  
A name that was true to myself and would describe me accurately and without exaggerating while making it clear that my bad ways were things of the past.

A whirlwind of different names went through my mind giving me a splitting headache which made me feel as if my skull would split in half as I tried to picture the new and kinder big sister to my long lost brother Lincoln which I would try and become starting from this moment onward.  
A big sister who was still competitive and pretty rough as I would have to be if I was going to go back to playing sports and giving these no good bullies the kick in the backside they deserved.  
But a kind one who understood when it was time to put a dam on the tears and self-pity in order to improve.

One name remained as I silently promised my brother that I would treat my new best friend like a friend and not a tool or punching bag.  
That I'd try and comfort her when she needed it instead of ignoring her and making her feel worse.

"Hi. I'm Daisy."

"Nice to meet you Daisy."

 **And thus ends my first chapter of what I feel the Loud House would be like if Lincoln left.  
Now don't get me wrong I like the Loud House as a show and I'm always eager for the next episode. But I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I say that Lincoln isn't treated the best.  
And even if the show makes it clear that he finds how he is treated acceptable and that he can tolerate it, I do think that even he has a limit to how much he can handle and that he's already getting close to this limit.  
I also don't like how a lot of characters don't get punished except for Lincoln.  
One thing I always felt was that many of the Loud sisters have traits comparable to a lot of other well known characters which no one can notice except for me.  
And I feel it'd be fun to write a fic where I point this out.  
So with our beloved white-haired boy in a household of ten girls out of the picture we see one sister ready to repent and change their ways for the better.  
Review and tell me how you feel those whose stories are yet to come after the brunette jock's tragic tale will likely turn out.  
But until then thank you greatly for reading and I will see you in the next chapter.**


	2. Future Lucy Loud

Lynn: "I love Karate"

Lana: "I love Kera-tey"

Lola: "I love Money ay"

Lucy: "I hate all of you."

The young, naïve and vulnerable Lucy Loud was not prepared for her brother's sudden departure from her already hard to cope with life.  
On the surface incredibly unflappable and unyielding to any emotion be it positive or negative, Lucy was among the first to completely and utterly snap without their only brother.

A great fortune teller, she prided herself in claiming to be during long road trips or waits in the mall lobby when she had nothing better to do but deal out her set of ornate tarot cards to take great pleasure in the various scares she incited with her proposed ability to see the future.

But all her fortune telling couldn't have predicted something as catastrophic as the tragic event that proved too much for even an aficionado to the dark and morbid to withstand without sniffing quietly in her sleep every night so that her much more energetic roommate Lynn couldn't help but hear.

Lucy was never one to appear very enthusiastic about even the brightest joys life had to offer, nor one to reveal much hurt or regret not even anger when events didn't transpire the way she'd have preferred them to. A dedicated mortician and sucker for dark and serious gothic literature who preferred quiet and empty space where she could focus on her work in peace, contemplating what the afterlife after this one had to offer.  
It was not unusual for Lucy to smile very rarely so that every time she did, Lynn senior quickly hollered for anyone nearby to fetch the camera.  
The blank and empty vision which Lucy regarded the world around her with was nothing her sisters hadn't been acquainted with either.

But the loss of their one shared brother had somehow managed to take Lucy's already rock-bottom capacity to positively emote from bad to greatly worse.  
The cold and glassy eyes that once Lucy's sisters never really minded now seemed so much more striking and frightening to even look at from a distance.  
The room seemed to drop several degrees in temperature and the family swore that their limbs were seizing up with almost stone like stiffness every time the new and changed Lucy came into the room even if only to do something as innocuous as ask for a glass of sugar.  
Aside from the fact there was still the faintest colour on the young poet's pale cheeks and that her eyes were still open albeit with little light in them, the family could have sworn that it was the ghost of their long gone sister who had returned as a chilling reminder of their failures rather than an actual person.

It wasn't an unknown or new fact to the Loud family that Lucy was the one who liked dark and creepy things. It was however new that she had become frightening to even stand close to.

She wasn't the possessive and territorial Lori who demanded that everyone but Leni stay out of her room or be turned into a human pretzel.  
She wasn't the extremely unstable and often untrustworthy joker Luan whose pranks on April fools day took any hint of likeability that she could have built up over the year well away.  
And she certainly wasn't anywhere near as quick-tempered Lola who was well known for pitching a fit when even she was denied even the smallest thing.

Before Lincoln had vanished never to be found or seen again, Lucy could easily have been considered one of the more pleasant family members to talk to, even confide in.  
Even if she did at times seem a little trapped in her own dark world for her own good, everyone had their harmless little fantasies surely?

These days, Lucy Loud barely spoke even when you factored in how quiet and hushed up her sisters had grown over the time Lincoln left them for a reason they dared not speak about or explain, but each member in the Loud family knew well.

Luan played fun and harmless pranks which she made certain would cause the goth not the slightest bit of pain unlike her previous much less restrained ones, and told the absolute best jokes that the comedian in her fifteen years of studying comedy had painstakingly managed to master.  
And Lucy's hapless frown did not so much as twitch.

Luna played the happiest songs she could think of and in the most cheerful and optimistic voice that in her own depression she could muster up.  
First she used her guitar, then a violin and when those instruments had no impact on her little sister's blank stare, she resorted to every last piece of musical equipment that she had manged to salvage with the little budget a big family could spare her.  
Xylophone, drums, and then even a clarinet that Luna had long stopped using since she switched from classic to rock music were just a few of the things that the brown haired musician nearly broke apart trying to impress her rapidly deteriorating black haired little sister just the slightest amount.

With trembling hands and a shaking body, Lucy gave a small and unenthusiastic few claps.  
Then without another sound she left Luna's room as quietly as she had entered it.  
It didn't take someone with as many fancy degrees as Lisa for Luna to realize that those few claps meant absolutely nothing and that the best musician in the world couldn't put Lucy's grief to rest.

At school, Lucy's grades strangely didn't plummet the same way some of her sisters did after Lincoln left the scene.  
She continued to pass reasonably well with very passable if not great marks.  
She had always been a quiet girl even before this incident and so no one at school at least noticed any noticeable changes in her behaviour.

It was one rainy night when Lucy silent as usual stepped into the living room that she felt the eyes of all the family upon her harder than she was used to, that she realized that her time was up.

She felt the sharp and unerring gaze of who were supposed to be her loving sisters and parents as a rabbit saw a pack of rabid wolves about to pounce.  
They hadn't spoken yet, clearly eager for her to be the one to break the ice for once.

She turned to beg her big brother for his reassurance only to once again remember that he was no longer with her. It was then that a new emotion blazed within the usually unflappable goth as she turned once more to face what was meant to be the loving and supportive family she was meant to be able to turn to when days like this came, days where she felt nothing worked and she wanted nothing but to retreat and take shelter far from here.

She didn't need to speak, scream or make any noise to get her point across.  
The lightning speed at which she proceeded to bolt for the door despite the pouring rain and sounds of loud thunder outside said more than a library of books could.

"Lucy, come back." Her roommate Lynn was first to call as she tried to sprint after her to no avail.  
"Don't leave. We can work this out".

Lucy continued however to run further out into the rain, notwithstanding how the cold and filthy water drenched her to the bone.  
Lucy didn't want to work anything out since the time for working things out was long gone.

The dark haired girl continued to run until she found an alley where she finally allowed herself to stop running, slinking into a pile of bin bags.  
She had seen enough horror movies to know that this was the place where anyone who would be looking for her would search last.  
The rain continued to soak into her now incredibly dampened form but she had by now become numb to it and so she cared not.  
On the contrary the rain would make it harder for anyone to find her so well hidden here.

About an hour passed and as the rain began to clear, she heard footsteps and people's voices in the distance.  
Resisting the urge to step out from this pile of rotting detritus as disgusting as even a gravedigger like her found it to be, she continued to stay down as the row of uniformed men came by and saw no sign of her before finally walking away.

Deliberately, Lucy waited until the sounds of their footsteps had completely died away for several uninterrupted seconds before very gingerly creeping from her hiding place.

She was filthy, stinking and extremely cold but she knew what had to be done.

Start a new life among strangers where her family would not think to come looking for her.  
A life that her missing big brother would approve of if he were still here.

A ghost of a smile crept on to Lucy's pale face as she brushed herself down and began to head down the path out of town she knew was least taken.  
Her time to leave the house and fend for herself had come a little early, but in some ways maybe that wasn't so bad.

Death was after all, the first step in rebirth.  
She would prove that she depressed, dark and introverted goth, but a useful one.  
That even someone with as little confidence as her was worth something.

But she wasn't Lucy Loud. Not anymore.  
Lucy Loud in her mind had died the day Lincoln left.

Eyeing the nearest bin to her, she caught a glimpse of what appeared as a dark outfit of some sort peeking out from the opening in the lid of the bin.  
She opened it to find, in a relatively dry and undamaged condition since the bin was almost empty, an outfit.  
A tightly fitting, sharp black shirt decorated by a sharper yellow symbol with a matching set of trousers and a black mask that covered the eyes.

The sharp symbol, the silhouette of a bat.

Lucy didn't care that it might well have been in a condition so unsanitary that even Lana would hesitate to touch that, let alone wear it.  
She didn't care that it was probably worth no more than half a dollar even on the day whoever threw it here brought it.  
Or that Halloween was still two whole seasons away.

To Lucy, it was none other than a symbol from fate itself.  
An omen that set her future and destiny in solid stone.  
A sign guiding her forward to the inevitable.

She took it out, gave it a brief wipe and changed into it before throwing her old clothes into the bin and covering the lid of the bin with a set of bags after tightly closing it.

She and her old friend darkness, merged together at long last.  
No longer just her hobby, but now her way of life, darkness had consumed the last vestiges of what little light she had not yet parted with.  
She was an embodiment, a living avatar and not just a disciple of the night any longer.  
Its sword and its shield, its missionary in a foreign field.

Each step seemed to speed her up more and more as she dashed from the city with a speed that would bring her sister Lynn to tears of envy.  
It was time to cover the world in shadow and bring about a never ending night which even the morning sun itself couldn't vanquish.

And she knew exactly where her quest begun.

The New York Police Department was beyond happy to heap laurels of praise and affection upon their newest and youngest member whose age they cared not a whit about when she came and in a quiet but no less startling yet friendly voice, asked to join.

"Aren't you a little young to think about volunteering for such a dangerous and difficult job" the recruitment officer had asked, visibly quailing before the sight of the sharply dressed young lady in the dark costume who in turn regarded him with an icy stare that seemed to sear into his very soul.

"Yes. Yes I am." Was the nonchalant reply. "But hire me anyway."

"Are you crazy. Fighting crime in this hellhole of a place is dangerous enough for us grown-ups as it is. We can't just let a little kid like you out there, it simply isn't safe."

"I'm not afraid of dying." The girl crisply replied, her voice as void of emotion as when the conversation began. "And before you tell me otherwise. No one is too young to die."

"Well er, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but we still can't hire you. Company policy and all that. So er, go home kid please." The grown man was beginning to lose the last vestiges of his confidence and he wanted this talk to be over as quickly as possible before the unexplained fear flooding his system bit by bit overwhelmed him entirely.

"Well first of all, I don't have a home sir so I can't really just go home. Second of all, what if I work for less. If you just let me go, I'll just starve anyway so its not as if you're helping me in anyway by not letting me join. And isn't there a law somewhere that says that child labour is legal if you give me good enough conditions and its of my free will and consent. So I reiterate my earlier request one more time, please give me a position and let me show you what I can do. If you want me to go, I'll go but Sigh, it doesn't mean I won't be conducting my own work to crack down on crime. Just keep that in mind before you make your final decision."  
The goth girls confidence in stark contrast to the tall policeman, had not waned in the slightest at the officer's warnings.

The officer had no choice but to feel admiration for this outlandish little girl by this point.  
All his warnings about the unpleasantness and dangerousness of the job as well as the obvious fact that she was underage and too young to just think about throwing her life away like this were doing nothing to blunt her passion as an inner fire seemed to blaze within her stronger and stronger by the minute even as they spoke.

"What's a nice kid like you even doing in a place like this?" the man incredulously asked after a while. "Why do you even want this dead end, stupid and life threatening job that pays so badly and works you to the bone so hard?"

He was happy when it took the girl a little while to ponder his question. His smile was soon knocked off his face and replaced by one of complete shock and awe when the carefully deliberated answer came in a surprisingly emotional voice choked with deep sincerity and empathic honesty.

"Well. Before I die (as I know I and everyone around me no doubt eventually will) I want to give something back to the world. Something that isn't selfish and completely for myself and something that shows that even a stupid and selfish person like me does kind of have a heart.  
I just want… to prove to myself that I did more than just exist. More than just waste my life worrying about dying to even live it properly or appreciate it.  
Its, what my brother. It's what my brother would have wanted if he was here with me now.  
It would be my brother's parting wish. It would be my family's parting wish."

The man was flabbergasted. Completely at a loss for words.  
Could this daunting figure dressed almost in complete black in that sinister ass suit which he wasn't sure was a formal outfit or a silly Halloween costume that a certain troubled mind was too apathetic to change out off, be another Mother Theresa.  
The next Mohandas Gandhi?  
Had Martin Luther King come back from the dead and disguised himself as a little girl and was the fetish for a costume with so much black a hidden metaphor for something?

"I want to die so that others can live. I want to die so that others can be happy even if I can't. And I know that the chance that I will ever be properly happy now is very slim.  
So please sir, reconsider your decision. It would mean a lot to me and my brother."

She had him cornered. She had all but beaten the idea that if he turned down this generous offer which was impossible for all but the most callous or most stupid of idiots to turn down, he would be awakening a whole pack of savage and rabid sleeping dogs.  
And if the old saying his daddy always used to say to him which had always served him well in his career up until now held any grain of truth, then it was never a good idea to wake the sleeping dogs.  
The girl hadn't come to beg for a job after finding herself out of pocket or out of boredom.  
He wasn't the one with anything to offer her or anything she particularly wanted or needed.

She had come instead to give him a choice between two types of justice.  
Two solutions for a problem that would never be solved otherwise.

To put it simply, whether he accepted or refuted the clearly very depressed goth who had so far not moved from where she stood since the conversation began, decided whether the feared Light Yagami or the saintly L would be the one running the crime fighting team for at least the city.

And that was no decision.

"Wait here a minute please." Requested the man as he shakily walked towards a door behind the counter that the girl stood behind.  
Today was a good day for the city to finally start to rebuild itself from the pitiful set of ruins it had become.

The new member of the NYPD decided that the part of the state known only as "New Gotham" would be a good place for her to begin her campaign against crime.  
And that a rundown apartment in a dark alleyway with no running water, no electricity and no central heating would be the perfect place for her to live.  
Even with her reduced pay compared to the rest of the force, her new abode took only miniscule amounts from her salary and this was part of its appeal for her.  
Lights and other unnecessary luxuries like a Television never meant much to a dark-loving goth anyway.

It was not necessary to describe how her first mission as well as the others that ensued seemed to go swimmingly well.  
The one detail worth mentioning was that by the time the young heroine had been a state trooper for only two months, criminals from around the city left every light in their house on when they went to sleep and many even brought a nightlight so that the nightlight industry had become almost as profitable as the tobacco and alcohol industry almost overnight.

Some criminals didn't go to sleep at all and opted to stay awake all night, chugging down their weight in caffeine and energy drinks while hugging a teddy bear with their eyes closed and praying.  
Soon it would become very easy to distinguish many goats from the sheep simply by looking at whether or not they had baggy eyes and uncontrollable yawning fits every few minutes.

Lucy Loud never used her true name when introducing herself lest her family take it in their heads to come looking for her too soon before her righteous mission had progressed.  
She instead took the title "Cassandra Lucienne Cain".  
A name whose first part meant kindness and newfound love of life.  
Whose second part reminded her that a part of her reputation would be forever tarnished as a result of her past mistakes and that it was important that she keep a close eye on herself if she didn't want to go back to being the person of poor character she once was.  
And whose third part did little but add some sass and style to an otherwise overly serious and nerdy name which sounded like something even the most educated and wealthy family wouldn't name their daughter.

The new title that the state would soon gift to their newfound guardian, came partly from how she usually stuck to the shadows when pursuing her targets and only came into the light when no other option presented herself.  
It came mostly from the shiny emblem on her unusual costume that she had not changed from since her first day on the job and how when she arrived at a place, a lot of the animals especially bats fled away from the place at top speed screeching frantically.

Criminals who the young enforcer quickly caught and threw in prison, shared tales of how long before their kidnapper came for them, the room seemed to drop several degrees in temperature  
and they were each gripped by an unexplained fear which caused their muscles to tense up and sweat to come dripping uncontrollably from their brow.  
They'd say that it was always from the shadows of the room that she struck, the places that the lights hadn't covered.  
They'd look around to see why these strange feelings were coming over them but see nothing and no one.  
Not even the sound of anything but their own pained breath would be heard until they finally dared a look behind them to find it was already too late to fight or run or do anything other than accept their fate.  
The only eggs the thief who planned to steal the Faberge egg would be getting for a long time would be hard boiled ones , and the only bars the son who killed his father to inherit his vast fortune would be seeing anytime soon would be made of iron.

Cassandra's eyes disarmed any attempt at deception, as many prisoners found out when they had tried to bluff their way out of being captured.  
"You've got the wrong man" they would no doubt have liked to say but that baleful stare snatched their voices before they could even begin to try and lie.

Some criminals tried to fight back but often found that long before they could draw their own gun, Cassandra had already drawn hers out.  
Never mind how difficult it was to even move a muscle to reach for a weapon when fear was flooding through your body long before the threat was even imminent.  
It wasn't even the gun being pointed at them that scared the evildoers into almost complete submission but rather that the apparition who would soon appear before them was no ordinary person.  
An angel in devil's clothing was the kindest way many of the city hero's new admirers would often describe her.  
A being who had crawled out of the place deep underground which must not be named or spoken about, returned to earth when none of the angels who lived in the clouds gave a damn enough to help in their place.

It wasn't long before a lucrative set of new doors opened for many previously impoverished and starving miscreants who now lived in a very peaceful and happy state which would soon go on to be described as "one of the safest places on earth".  
A comic series which would show no signs of seasonal rot or waning popularity even by the time it entered its six hundred and sixty sixth, 1000 paged book entry in its eleventh series would rise to critical acclaim as being one of the only anime's that earned so much money that the creators could afford to draw it in full colour. Perhaps the first of its kind.

Cinema's which were previously empty and in dire risk of closing with every day were now packed so full that even a top of the range website designed to accommodate the extra customers had its server often go down because of how many tickets were getting ordered.  
The seats were crammed so full that many people had to stand and even when the prices were tripled or even quadrupled, no customers were lost.  
What made each film so spectacular was that the viewers could shed tears of joy at the knowledge that what they saw was no longer a drawing put to the screen, a figment of some artist's imagination which while fun to watch was sadly not real.  
No, they now watched a genuine set of documentaries about a real and genuine figure who might be lurking in the darkness of the room, watching them even as they watched the film about her.

The girl who had long given up the name "Lucy Loud" began to change in several ways.  
She smiled more, cut her hair to show a pair of radiant blue eyes which were as blue as the midday sky in summer and of shining brilliance.  
Changed her outfit from black to very dark purple to become more "Super kid friendly".  
Was happier to stand on the pavement when not on duty to answer the questions her newfound admirers heaped upon her.  
And was happily and gratefully able to nod when the sculptors asked to adorn the museum, the city square and later the mall and just about every location one could care to name with a statue of their saviour.

It wasn't that Lucy had become more vain or selfish that she was happy to accept these gifts.  
But rather she had learned that people did these things for her because they wanted to as her friends.  
That friendship was an important part of life that should be embraced and not repulsed and that no one could live by themselves without accepting that they needed to help and in turn be helped forward by others.

Lincoln had tried to teach her these things, but she had been too vain and haughty back then to ever listen.  
She had not only refused help and companionship with others back then, but worse still refused to help others.  
And by doing that, she had played her own part small as it was in ousting her only brother.

Not that the offerings she accepted didn't do any good for the common people either.  
A lot of royalties raised as a result of all the great works made after the now very happy goth girl came into her hands and rather than hoard them to herself, she decided to give it away.

She bought no mansion, no butler, no fancy gadgets save the standard issue flash bangs and pistol the police department gave her and very occasionally a grapple gun bought at the lowest price possible.  
No expensive car either. A second hand, plain passenger van with no radio or air conditioning did the job just fine.  
She wasn't that kind of "hero". Nor would Lincoln approve if he saw her with those things.

Instead, Arkham Asylum gradually became Arkham Paradise as it was repurposed and proper doctors who actually knew what the heck they were doing were hired to replace the improper ones who usually didn't even have a bachelors degree.  
Arkham Elementary and Arkham Academy, even Arkham Kindergarten and daycare soon rose up next to a now much more pleasant to look at main edifice.

Taxes were lowered to encourage more trading and without the constant threat of as many criminals, new trade routes were established towards the neighbouring cities and  
"New Gotham" became a place actually worth spending a weekend at.

And a certain green haired man realizing that even he wasn't undefeatable by any means, decided wisely to leave the increasingly utopian city alone and flee.  
Not to plan his next scheme but to the beach where one his last safe houses remained where he'd spend the foreseeable future at least with most of his days asleep, occasionally licking ice cream.  
Even he needed a break from raising hell every now and again.

A certain other Millionaire wasn't so submissive however.  
He didn't like this new stranger who was beating him to every job so that in the evenings he was left with nothing to do and certainly no fans to chase him around.  
He didn't like that he now had to fire his butler and sell much of his properties as money that was supposed to go to him, was going to those insignificant puny weaklings much further down the pyramid he had been sitting atop for so long now.  
Partly because a picture of this new girl now sold for so much that most of his workers after failing to demand a raise from him, left his office to work for one of the new "Much fairer and much nicer" businesses where they actually treated their employees "Fairly" like "Worthwhile people".

He was gnashing his teeth angrier and angrier.  
He was bored to death in his now much smaller house.

And finally one day, his patience reached its end and donning his own dark suit he stormed out to the streets inflamed with pure jealousy and rage which would have made even a Lynn Loud who had lost her softball game and called her brother bad luck seem reasonable in comparison.

"I have your friend. If you have any sense of common human decency and want to see her again, you'll show up at this address when the zeroes line up on the twenty-four-hour clock tonight, sharp.  
Do not bring anyone with you if you know what's good for you.  
Remember, I am watching you, you evil little pile of scum  
(Below was messily scrawled the address in question, even less legible than the rest of the writing)".  
Read the note that a constable showed to the former Lucy when her new friend was not found at work or anywhere that morning despite a thorough search.

Lucy nodded gratefully and asked to be left alone so she could reflect upon this clue in peace.

Good friend Kara had only become known to her for a few weeks but with how well they seemed to complement each other, it didn't much matter.  
A cheerful and bubbly blonde who grew up a single child apartment in a big city which her friend named quite aptly as "Metropolis", she reminded Lucy a lot of Luan and Leni with a good bit of Luna thrown in too. Fortunately almost no semblance of sporty Lynn unless you counted her above average fitness.  
Lucy could understand why the scoundrel who instigated this ploy would pick her of all people to prey upon.  
She had after all despite her short entry into the police department, become a supporting character in Lucy "Cassandra's" show and comics.  
And since the day that she came to the city to volunteer her services, she had made it clear that it was Lucy that inspired her to this otherwise dead end, poor paying and highly risky job.  
It was as if some of her siblings had come back to Lucy just when she thought life couldn't be better for her and she'd been overjoyed to find that Kara wasn't at all impartial to a good bit of poetry and classic literature.

Someone wanted to take all that away though.  
Someone wanted the old Lucy Loud back.  
The one who liked no one and was not well liked in return.  
The one who spent her days wasting valuable time waiting for an early death forgetting that the present was just as important as the past and future.

"I'm going to show up at the appointed time by myself." Lucy told her colleagues.  
"Don't follow me"  
A firm glare told her fellow workers that she would not take no for an answer and that she was going by herself whether they liked it or not.  
And they knew better than to argue when "Cassandra" was the reason why the city was doing as good as it was.

"I'm not afraid of death." Lucy said to herself like a mantra as she arrived at the place stated by the letter. A tall and well-lit apartment in a nice part of the city with clean streets and nice trees growing on the sidewalk.  
"To the well-organized mind, death is just another great adventure."

There was no receptionist in the big and immaculate lobby Lucy duly noted as she pressed the button for the lift to summon it.

A homely place with nice sofa's and expensive looking tiling for walls, the architect certainly did have taste.

Whoever wrote that letter was probably expecting her to shy away to the safety of her home.  
Of course Lucy was clever enough to realize that this was probably a trap made to outright kill her.  
But she'd had enough running away for one lifetime. She'd run away once and for good reason, but not this time.  
She had failed her family before, and she'd not fail her new friend who she now saw as in all but blood and genetics, her newest sister.

What would she find when the elevator made it to the top floor where the letter told her to go to.  
What would she see when the big iron doors slid open.  
And was she too late to save her friend already so that this rescue mission became a matter of vengeance and retribution instead.

Her last thought as the elevator finally slowed down to a stop and the doors slowly began to open was that she hoped that her brother was happy and okay, wherever he ended up going to in the end.  
And that if she were to see him again at this moment and in this place, he'd be slightly more proud of her than he would have been if they'd met back at their family home back in royal woods before either of them had fled the place.

 **So another Loud sister has gone and changed herself for the better with Lincoln out of the picture.  
** **But what became of the other sisters?  
Review with your opinions and how you think this entire story will pan out?**


	3. Future Leni Loud: part 1

Lincoln and Leni put a dollar into the washing machine to try and get paint off it.  
Lincoln: "Did it work?"  
Leni: "No"  
Lincoln and Leni sand the dollar with a sanding machine.  
Lincoln: "Did it work?"  
Leni: "No"  
Lincoln sprays acid at the dollar.  
Lincoln: "Did it work?"  
Leni: "No"  
Lincoln begins hitting the dollar with a baseball bat.  
Lincoln: "NOTHING'S WORKING!"  
Leni: "Wait Lincoln. We're not cavemen."  
Leni walks Lincoln to a computer and puts the dollar on the table with the computer.  
Leni: "WE HAVE TECHNOLOGY!"  
Leni smashes the computer onto the dollar repeatedly until the computer breaks. The dollar is still covered in paint.  
Lincoln: "It didn't work"

They say that with age comes experience.  
That the older a little kid became the more he or she began to learn that life wasn't just a game and that he or she had to take responsibility for his or her own actions since all actions had their consequences whether good or bad.  
The more they were supposed to realize that pitching a fit in front of their parents wasn't the solution to every problem.  
The better and more dependable a role model you were meant to become, and thus the more control was handed to you with the assumption that you had already learned that with great power came great responsibility.

This might have explained why each time Lynn Senior and Rita left the house, their eldest child Lori who was by now almost an adult herself was put in charge of everything to the point where she could easily shunt all her siblings to bed while she hoarded the television and snack collection entirely to herself.  
Why although Lori did indeed call meetings with her siblings to decide what the next meal, the next trip or the next you name it was, it was always her that ultimately got the last say in the matter.  
When Lynn Senior and Rita had no objections to her suggestion of course, but that was incredibly rare with how much they loved each and every one of their children.

And even barring all that, Lori was the only one lucky enough to have a driver's license, and let's just say that you did not want to get on bad terms with your ride under any circumstances.  
And with hobbies so diverse and grand, each one of Lori's younger sisters and her one younger brother all had places to be.  
Lori knew this and was beyond overjoyed to exploit and capitalize on this dependence which had her family practically eating out of the palm of her hand.  
She loved being the one who had to do the least chores in a big house that got closer to falling apart every day despite being the oldest. She adored the way her siblings practically begged on her knees as they beseeched her desperately for her services like a Christian prayed to their god.  
Being the only sibling whose booming voice was enough to silence all others so that she always got her word in at every family discussion.

Lori loved it all and vowed not to let anyone deny her the privilege that the eldest of the house was heiress to. "Keep well back from taking what's literally rightfully mine and maybe I won't literally turn you into a literal human pretzel" in her own words.  
Which might have explained why one evening long ago when she overheard a cheerful and jubilant conversation where Lincoln and her sisters sans Leni were whopping for joy as they happily discussed how as soon as the second oldest child of the family, Leni finally passed her driving test, there'd finally be no more extorting of ridiculously unfair favours from that Cheapskate Lori.  
Leni wasn't greedy or selfish and she'd give them the rides they so badly needed unconditionally and with no strings attached as any good older sister ought to be doing.  
Sure they'd repay Leni for her kindness every now and again unconditionally to show their gratitude, but from now the Loud house was going to be a very different place.  
Different in the good way, that was.

It was as Lori heard the words "Won't need Lori anymore" that years of learning self-restraint, the value of nonviolence and the importance of family togetherness and responsibility quickly begun to collapse to the level of a whiny toddler breaking her toy while throwing a tantrum over not being played with for one measly minute while her mother was forced to rush to the phone to call an ambulance for their father who was dying from a sudden heart attack.

First her teeth begun to clench together as her hands balled together into fists.  
Her heart seemed to race quicker and quicker with every second to the point  
where she felt sure it would burst from overexertion.

Lori didn't need to hear another word of this conversation as she slunk away to her room to wait for night to fall. She had heard enough and she knew what needed to be done to prevent this awful tragedy from happening.  
She took out a tape recorder and pressed record as she began to ramble off all the bad advice concerning how to pass a driving test that she could think of.

She faked sleeping and when she took a sly glance to the bed beside her to see her sister Leni fast asleep, she drew out the recording she had made during the day from a drawer, pressed play and set it beside Leni.

Leni would never pass the test tomorrow now.  
Lori had made sure of that.  
Now she would stay the sole driver of the Loud House for a long, long time.  
Which meant a long time of more favours from her younger siblings and having full reign of Vanzilla the family van all to herself.  
Lori grinned a devilish grin as she settled herself back to sleep after plugging her own ears with two pieces of cotton It seemed Luan was not the only one who could rig up elaborate pranks in this household. Had she become Luan's pranking protégé of sorts?

It was not necessary to describe the epic fail that the budding driver in the stylish driving outfit she had prepared just for the occasion was forced to suffer the next day.  
A cursory apology was all that was needed to pacify the angry Lincoln and the still confused Leni who even years later would never come close to learning how to drive.

Those were events of the past that Leni Loud, the relative sweetheart of her family had largely forgotten about. Only a vague recollection of a certain day in the past where she was certain she had been driving normally like a normal person with Lincoln and her other little sisters helping her every step of the way.  
To Leni, this day had become all but a dream.  
A dream of a beautiful fantasy that she would always have but never accomplish since she had always stood in shock and awe of how well her older sister and roommate drove.  
Her sister Lori dismissed Leni's mention of the vague memories she still had of this day, as being little more than a nice but not real dream and Leni had been satisfied with this answer for a long while.

It was only after Lincoln left that the second oldest yet most naïve child of the Loud family was about to realize that those fantasies were far more than what she supposed them to be and that she wasn't crazy at all.  
And with it, the knowledge that she had not simply failed her duties as the second oldest, but failed them miserably. But not

The changes in Leni's behaviour were much more-subtle at least when compared to those of her siblings.  
Perhaps the old saying that ignorance was bliss really had its place in explaining why even in these bleak times, Leni seemed a lot less derelict at least in comparison to the rest of the house.

Still speaking with a flighty voice that seemed on the verge of bursting into song with every word and still walking with the air of a carefree schoolgirl with her head in the clouds with her head held high.  
It would seem at first glance, that Leni was not awfully bothered by her brother' sudden departure from her life.

While her siblings were continuing to divide themselves apart from each other further and further as they rushed to blame each other for who exactly drove Lincoln away, Leni spent her days trying very hard to keep her cool as difficult as it was now.

Ironically this meant that she went to the mall less, strange considering that it was once her favourite place for a day out and that she stayed in her room more, especially when the oldest sister of the family Lori was out of the house.

There came a saying in life that sooner or later however happy you were, one would enter into a phase known as "midlife crisis". A phase that came without warning, foreshadowing and often seemingly without reason. A time when you locked yourself in your room wondering what might have been. How even if you had felt just yesterday like you were the happiest, luckiest man or woman on the planet, you now wonder if you could have done just a little better had you not made that one stupid mistake that you had tried and failed to ever really forgive yourself for.  
A hatchet that you'd hidden out of site but never buried, so to speak.  
A hatchet you yourself built to be used against yourself.

Leni lay on her bed, her eyes blank and looking nowhere in particular.  
She needed for the first time in her life, to think.  
To take a long and hard look at herself and to wonder what exactly went wrong.  
Her white haired little brother had seemed like such an optimist, always quick to forgive her and his other sisters no matter what they'd done to him.

So what exactly happened?

For the first time in her life, Leni felt the stresses of being the second oldest in the family crawling onto her back, weighing down onto her like a ton of bricks. The feeling was almost suffocating  
She remembered every one of the instances she had refused to lift a finger to stop her sisters when they treated Lincoln like a pariah.  
The time when Lynn had said he was bad luck for instance. She hadn't done anything but look on blankly when Lincoln hadn't been allowed to come to the movies with them and when his furniture was sold and he was kicked from his house, Lynn stubbornly refusing to let him back in when he came clean with his motives about why he had allowed Lynn to accuse him of being "bad luck".  
He was the one rightfully calling out Lynn for her wrongdoings, she was the one grasping at straws with no remorse whatsoever over what she had persuaded her family to do to the poor boy.  
And Leni believed Lynn.

She believed the sore loser who pitched a destructive and hissy fit over even the smallest of losses, and not a reasonable and rational little brother who did his best to always hold his temper back regardless of the pain and humiliation he was put through.

Lynn wasn't perfect and neither was Lincoln.

But it was the intentions, and the genuine remorse that Lincoln felt for his actions as well as how he was much quicker to see his own faults before others that made him the glue that had been holding this household together all this time.

It had taken Leni all this time to realize this, and the knowledge that this long due epiphany came far too late to make any sort of difference made Leni feel like the entire world was collapsing around her every day that Lincoln wasn't here anymore.  
"Though I did my best not to show it, I can assure you that back then my heart was breaking" Leni would later reveal when she reminisced about these days.

Leni might not have been the brightest bulb in the box, in the words of her young savant sister Lisa.  
But even Leni knew that a large part of why her family weren't smiling or talking or playing with each other anymore was that Lincoln was gone.  
And as optimistic as Leni's simple mind made her, it hadn't blessed her with enough ignorance to ignore that as "nice" or "friendly" as she tried to be, she too had crossed a line along with the others in her family that caused this calamity.

Leni never spent as much time with her little brother Lincoln as she would have liked.  
It was Lori after all who had spent most of the baby boy's infancy holding him, feeding him, telling him stories that made him stop his crying and fall into a pleasant sleep.  
Leni had chosen to spend most of those years often away from the home with her friends from outside the family, going to the places any generic teenage girl into "fashion and style" would have made a beeline for.

As Leni would very reluctantly attest later in her own part of her family's memoirs (which would go on to become a global bestseller that put even William Shakespeare to great shame)  
the Lori of back then had a very different personality.

How Leni wished she'd had some of those years back now, knowing full well even as she made that fantasy, that she was asking the impossible and simply making petty excuses.  
The feeling Leni felt as she watched her family collapse around her like a king watching a great fire destroying his castle, was not sadness. The time to mourn had long past and dwelling on what had already happened couldn't change the past.  
It wasn't anger either. It would be hypocritical to call her sisters out when Leni knew she had been no better herself. Lynn may have been the one to call Lincoln bad luck and the others may have had a more active role in kicking him from the house but if there was one thing Leni as a simple minded simpleton had gleaned from this experience, it was that choosing not to do anything was a choice as well, be it a good or bad choice.  
That, and another far more important lesson that Leni very nearly pinched herself over.  
A lesson that she should have learned a long time ago when she was but an infant along with Lori, watching as a house originally meant for just the two of them became fuller as first baby Luna and then Luan and the others were born so that soon the four rooms next to the bedroom that she and Lori shared were converted into other bedrooms designed to house their new younger siblings.

Leni was the second oldest child in the family after all, her age falling just short of Lori by less than a year.  
And by that logic at least, Leni had failed the second hardest in her responsibility to provide a good role model for poor Lincoln and by extension all her other siblings sans Lori who she had always viewed as being so clever and knowing that Leni dared never question Lori's choices and suggestions instead standing in awe at how much more her one older sister seemed to know compared to her.

Two things began to resonate more and more loudly in Leni's mind, every day as the days seemed to rocket past.  
Two things that Lori could do so well that Leni had tried and failed several times to emulate despite her greatest efforts when she poured heart and soul in trying to remotely copy her older sister.

To take charge and to drive.  
To take over supervising her younger siblings when mum and dad were away without the house collapsing to the level of a total warzone where furniture all over the place got badly wrecked and mess got thrown everywhere.  
And to be able to guide Vanzilla on a drive to anywhere so that the final destination for the family van was not another one way trip to the local garage, and for its subpar driver a one way ticket to the emergency room in a wildly speeding ambulance.

Only Lori could do those two things. And Lori was not even more than a year older than Leni.

The feeling blazing inside the ditzy blonde's mind now as the day for Lori to leave the family home and move in with her long-time boyfriend "Bobby boo boo bear" fast approached, was irony.  
Irony in its most concentrated form.

How could the second oldest member of a family who was meant to have the second most amount of life experience, common sense as well as the second most rational mind also be the one who had contributed the second least to the family.  
Second least may even have been an understatement since even as young as Lily was, she was already quickly learning the key skills like walking and speaking while Leni was still being continuously being told by Lisa that she was "simple minded" and Lori scolded her that "Leni, you'd lose your head if wasn't screwed on properly".

Leni couldn't be part of planning a surprise party without spoiling the surprise, Lily could.  
Leni couldn't stop her sisters from refusing to do their chores, just because Lincoln was rightfully tired of having the worst chore in the house, but Lily could.  
But most of all, one thing bothered Leni the most.  
Which was that she clearly remembered a day where she had very nearly learned to drive properly but hadn't for a reason she couldn't quite put her finger on despite trying very hard to remember.

Leni alone knew that she was both blessed and cursed with an incurable condition, or talent depending on which perspective you looked it.  
It was not Asperger's, nor was it autism as many would guess it to be, but a much simpler thing called selective memory.  
A memory that remembered some things with photographic accuracy and perhaps better while completely not registering others even if they were things she had seen a mere few seconds ago.  
The problem came from how Leni had absolutely no control which things she'd go on to memorize to the letter years later, and which things she'd keep forgetting no matter how many times she was reminded about to the point where most of the people she knew simply stopped trying to remind her and left her to her own device.

Not unlike the proverbial game master who despite memorizing every line, paragraph and piece of punctuation in his video game manuals who was still banging his head on the table at the sight of so many F grades.  
It wasn't his fault that one thing seemed so easy while another one made climbing Mount Everest look like a cakewalk by comparison.  
Nor Leni's bad intentions that made it easy for her to assemble a brand-new bed from scratch but still fail to realize that "making a bed" for Lori to get a ride to the mall simply meant that she had to fold a few sheets and she'd be done with Lori's request and at the mall long ago.

The bottom Line, Leni supposed after she had long lost track of the time that passed since Lincoln left and a lot of soul searching, was that meaning well and doing well were two very different things.  
And that one of the worst beliefs still held by a lot of "stupid" people herself included, was the silly thought that ignorance was bliss.  
It was this belief that made her refuse to let Lincoln back into the house when Lynn accused him of something as silly as being bad luck for anyone he came near.  
This belief that made her spoil the surprise party which was meant to be a surprise.  
And what made even talking to her difficult since she would almost always respond in a way that made the person she was trying to speak with angry or tired that they were not being listened and responded to in the constructive way they had wished.  
No wonder her sisters and Lincoln didn't talk to her very much and no wonder they kept ignoring her suggestions as if they didn't trust her.  
They were only trying to be pragmatic, not cruel since she wouldn't really have helped much anyway if she couldn't even keep a surprise party a surprise.

But that one memory she had of the day where she tried and failed to pass her driving test.  
Where she nearly crashed the family van and narrowly escaped being rushed to ER in the back of an ambulance.

She remembered something about having to build a bed for her older sister Lori just for a ride to, possible the mall.  
She remembered playing a racing game of some sort with Lincoln and failing spectacularly.  
Everyone in the family, sans Lori trying to talk to her in a way she could understand so that they'd get through to her. "Leni speak" she thought they called it.  
And then… Lincoln lecturing Lori and Lori sadly apologizing to her when she didn't pass the test and…  
Lori…

It was all coming together now, Leni thought as she struggled not to cry at the prospect that the older sister she had been so proud to have all these years could do such a terrible thing.  
Lori didn't want her to learn to drive.  
Lori wanted her and quite possibly the others to keep doing favours for her and to keep mooching off of them because otherwise no one would be getting anywhere they needed to go.  
"It was like she went and bought the dress she knew you wanted" Lincoln's words echoed through her head as clear as a record player.  
A poor metaphor but it still got the point across.

Lori betrayed her.

The next day Lori walked into her and Leni's room with a jovial spring in her step at a fairly normal day with no mishaps for once.  
She had found some very nice dresses and shoes in the mall that day and couldn't wait to try them back on again. Some nice clothes really took her sad mind of the state of her now very unstable family.  
The goofy smile soon vanished when she ran into Leni standing near the doorway of their room, not looking pleased at all with arms crossed.

"Leni. What's wrong?" Lori instinctively asked. Leni hadn't said anything, but it was clear that something very bad was troubling her favourite little sister. And it was Lori's duty as the big sister that promised to always take care of her to find out what that very bad thing was.

Leni didn't answer. She seemed to be averting her gaze to meet Lori straight in the eyes. Almost as if, almost as if she was considering Lori responsible for whatever was ailing her.  
But surely Leni couldn't feel that way since Leni was the gentlest and forgiving person in the Loud family.

"Is something the matter?" Lori asked again. "You literally don't look like you're doing so well and I need to know what's wrong so I can help you."

After a few long tense seconds, Leni finally did respond. Though when she did, her voice didn't sound right at all. If you put Lisa's flat and condescending monotone voice together with dad's disapproving voice when he was giving a lecture and being serious instead of fun loving because someone had done something really bad, then you'd have a good idea of the voice that Leni spoke in.

"I'm not happy with something you did Lori. And even if some time has passed since then, I think you know why I'm upset."

"What even are you talking about?"

"It has to do with my driving test, which I didn't pass."

"What about it?"

Leni took a few silent seconds to carefully process her choice of words in her mind. She didn't want to sound stupid like she usually did.

"Did you try to stop me from trying to pass my driving test, Lori?"

"Leni!?"

"Did you purposefully try to make me fail my test so that you could keep getting favours from me and Lincoln and all of us?"

Leni's usually very confident complexion seemed to wither away almost instantaneously.  
Her eyes were darting back and forth suspiciously quickly and Leni swore she could see her big sister's hands shaking very nervously.  
Leni may not have been the brightest tool in the shed but when it came to reading even the most complex of emotions, even Lincoln stood in awe at Leni's immense levels of perception.  
And Leni realized right away that as uncomfortable as she was making Lori, she needed to push harder still with the questions.  
It was all coming together now and Lori needed to know that what she had done that day was sick and inhumane, not to mention very dangerous.

"You put a tape next to me when I was sleeping and that's how you stopped me passing the test, isn't it Lori?"  
One by one, the memories were rolling back into place where they belonged, piecing themselves together like pieces of a perfectly fitting puzzle almost as quickly as Leni remembered them.

"I wouldn't do that Leni… I wouldn't." Lori managed to say in a slightly shaking voice.

"I crashed the car really badly. I could have been killed!" said Leni, her voice almost coming in a sob.

Lori opened her trembling mouth to talk further but Leni cut her off. It was time for the good girl shtick to stop since Lori had done a great wrong.

"You're saying that you didn't do it. But. Are you prepared to say that with your hand on a stack of interpretive dance quarterlies!".  
Leni's usually gentle and mild dulcet tones became akin to that of an impatient judge as she looked the older sister she had grown to respect so much in her life, up and down.

"What are you literally talking about?" Lori stammered after a few long seconds.  
Kind and innocent Leni, the family's equivalent to a sweet cinnamon roll was backing her into a corner and she didn't like where this conversation was going at all.

"I'm not saying anything that would matter if you went over to Lisa's room right now and took a LIE DETECTOR TEST!"  
Leni's furore at this point had well since barrelled out of control, her blood racing at speeds that would make a hyperactive Lynn running in a footrace immediately after drinking double her weight in strong coffee seem sluggish as a turtle.  
An unprecedented level of rage that would make a Lola that had lost a beauty pageant and had her entire stack of fashion trophies seized from her, look like Martin Luther King in terms of nonviolence.  
But Leni didn't need to ball her fists or raise her voice to get her disapproval across to her now extremely frightened older sister who was practically pinching herself in the hopes that this was some terrible nightmare that she'd soon be woken from by the real Leni.  
The nice Leni.

The one that never held a grudge against anything or anyone.  
Not capable in the slightest of making such grand accusations or harbouring anger over something so little that had so long passed.  
Surely one little mistake couldn't mean so much after so long?

But if there was one thing Lori had to give this "Leni" any credit for, it was that she had indeed made a very valid point succinctly that Lori could indeed have killed her that day and that the budding new driver had been lucky to escape with no injuries save a very long lasting blow to her pride and self confidence.  
Had Lori really gone too far in her attempt to steal Leni's thunder?

"So here's what I think happened Lori, and correct me if I'm wrong." Said Leni, clearly realizing Lori's reluctance to speak.

"You wanted to keep making us do lots of favours for you and so you deliberately sabotaged my test because you know that if I learned to drive, you couldn't keep making us do all your chores for you and so you wouldn't have to share Vanzilla with anyone."

Lori couldn't respond to that. Everything Leni said was the absolute truth that she had been reluctant to admit even to herself.

"I can't prove you did it. And even though I'm not happy with what you did, I'm sorry if I've upset you Lori, but you need to understand that what you did was wrong too.  
And now I'll probably never learn to drive."  
Leni's voice softened but still not enough for Lori to feel safe that her sister had returned to her usual happy go lucky self.

"Please, don't do this again when Luna, Luan and Lynn start trying to learn to drive as well. You'll put them in great danger".

Lori could only very shyly nod and murmur a very afraid "mm hm".  
She might have been the oldest and bossiest but even she knew at times that it was wise to hold her tongue.

"I'm sorry. Please forgive me." Lori eventually managed on the verge of crying to reply.  
"I didn't mean for it to go that far. Please. I'm sorry. I really am."

Lori waited with her head hung down expecting Leni to outright reject her pathetic apology attempt or at the very least to give a cold shoulder.  
She even wouldn't have been surprised if Leni got angrier and insisted she was lying even about her apologies now.

But Leni seemed to buy it and though she didn't look Lori in the eye, she was surprisingly calm and composed when she next spoke.

"I forgive you Lori. Of course I forgive you.  
But that doesn't mean that I trust you as much as I used to. My trust is something you'll have to earn back."

Then Leni turned away and slowly left the room without looking back.

Little did poor Leni realize that the date on the calendar mounted on her and her sister's bedroom wall read March 31st.  
And even less did she notice that a certain brown haired prankster was laughing quietly but very maniacally in a room right next to hers.

Was the old saying that ignorance was bliss, very true after all.  
Or had the guy who made that up drunk and hungover when he said,

Since the next day, something was about to happen to the happy go lucky blonde in the blue dress.  
A wonderful miracle or a shocking tragedy depending on your viewpoint.


End file.
